Resource Topics

Spotlight on Literacy

Many different organizations and projects support literacy learning for students and adults both in and outside of school. In this section the NWP shines the spotlight on national and community partners worthy of your attention and support.

Spotlight On

September 2011
Katie Robbins, director of educational programming at Figment, an online community where young adults and teens come together to create, discover, and share their own writing and discuss their favorite works, discusses how Figment can be used in the classroom.
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May 2010
Art Peterson
One of the highest honors that teen writers can receive is publication in The Best Teen Writing. Writing Project sites are becoming increasingly involved in evaluating the writing in their region as affiliates of the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers, which publishes the anthology.
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October 2011
Art PetersonTeen Ink, called "The New Yorker for Teens," is the nation's largest publisher of teen work in print and online. Writing Project teachers and their students have been involved in Teen Ink for years. Students can submit fiction, nonfiction, poetry, book, movie and music reviews, and more. There is no charge to submit or to be published.
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November 2011
Tiffany Chiao
Common Sense Media helps kids navigate the Internet safely and interact with their peers in a responsible, respectable manner—and provides resources for parents and curriculum for teachers to serve those ends.
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April 2010
Have you thought about using comic strips as a new way to engage your students? It seems like a perfect step along the continuum of multimedia use in composition, but the artwork aspect of it may be daunting. Enter: Bitstrips for Schools.
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July 2010
The Alliance for Young Artists and Writers—with the help from Writing Project sites and state networks—works to identify, motivate, and recognize the next generation of artists and writers.
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August 2010
Art Peterson
Drawing on the expertise of some of the nation's most accomplished teachers, including some NWP teacher-consultants, the Teacher Leaders Network has elevated teachers' voices on policy issues and provided a vehicle for the sharing of best practices growing from experience.
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February 2010
Art Peterson
Leaders of the Southern Arizona Writing Project have guided much of the thinking in Tucson's GEAR UP program, which aims to prepare students in the city's high-needs schools for postsecondary education.
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March 2009
Grant Faulkner
The English Companion Ning brings English teachers a professional community that they sometimes lack in their schools. Teachers discuss books, lesson plans, and a panoply of classroom topics via discussion forums, blog posts, and multimedia.
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September 2009
To highlight the role of digital media in improving lifelong learning, the National Writing Project, the Consortium for School Networking, and Common Sense Media presented at a congressional briefing held in conjunction with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
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May 2009
Art Peterson
Poetry Out Loud, a program that encourages students to learn about poetry through memorization and performance, holds a competition that has inspired NWP teachers and their students.
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August 2008
Grant Faulkner
Lynn Jacobs, a teacher–consultant with the Northern California Writing Project, leapt into National Novel Writing Month in 2007 to fulfill her lifelong dream of writing a novel. The experience informed not only her writing process, but her teaching as well.
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July 2008
Art Peterson
In a cooperative venture, LSU Writing Project and the Baton Rouge nonprofit organization WordPlay engage students in writing by bringing spoken word poets into the schools to model and spread their art.
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December 2008
Gavin Tachibana
The Deep Roots program turns students into songwriters: professional musicians set the students’ lyrics to music and then record the songs—and in the process, students stay academically interested and engaged. The founder of the program is now taking it to other teachers.
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June 2009
Art Peterson
Teacher-consultant Connie McDonald knew the River of Words poetry contest was one that her students—familiar with coulees, bayous, and rivers—should get involved in. Now NWP of Acadiana students regularly win awards.
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